I chose to study the small passenger cars segment and apply the concept of reference price on it. This seemed interesting at the time since Tata Nano had just been launched and its effect on existing cars especially with respect to their price perception and reference price seemed novel and relatively unexplored.

Hence, I started out with the following objective.

Main point of interest in this study is Nano’s category membership. Will it be perceived to be a member of the A1-A2 category? While the question is very interesting, the study assumes that without strong efforts from the other brands in the segment, it could be perceived as a member of the category. There is also some categorization research which suggests the same. If so, it throws up interesting questions on the price perception in the category. How will the reference prices be impacted? What would brands in the category have to do to ensure price acceptability? These are the main considerations of the study.

I did manage to find some interesting literature on reference price and apply it to the category. Although, the report is a bit pedantic, if you like the subject, you may find the report interesting. You can download the report by clicking the following link. BDMS – Study on Reference Prices in Passenger Cars.

Credit default swaps is a contract in which the buyer makes a series of payments to the seller in exchange for the right to payoff if there is a default in respect of the reference party. The market for credit derivatives became larger than the underlying assets themselves, and it is often alleged that these instruments catalyzed the meltdown. The term paper aims at exploring the instrumentality of these instruments in precipitating the current financial crisis.

After an interesting analysis of what these financial instruments actually are and how they were used, we concluded:

Although the jury is still out on whether credit derivatives catalyzed the financial meltdown, evidence so far seems to suggest that they could indeed have played a crucial role. However, they may not deserve all the vilification that was heaped on them – from “financial WMDs” as Mr. Warren Buffet called them, to disowning of them by their former cheerleader Mr. Alan Greenspan. The genuine benefits of derivatives such as ability to hedge and price discovery of credit risk may in fact be fine-tuned in the future. However, it looks imperative that derivates be brought under the ambit of a regulator and probably a standardized and exchange traded form introduced to eliminate counterparty risk.

If you are interested in this topic, you can read our report by clicking the following link - role of Credit Default Swaps in precipitating the the current financial crisis.

The election commission of India collects various data on candidates of Lok Sabha elections. This data includes such variables as age, assets, liabilities, number and nature of criminal cases registered against the candidate, educational status etc.

The authors were interested in studying the effects (or the absence thereof) of these variables on the outcome of the election.

There were two parts to the analysis. One part was analysis of data collected for 2004 elections, which was the actual data. The second part was analysis of data collected through a sample survey of IIMB students. Although not very surprising, the preferences of the two were markedly different. Here are some examples from the report.

It is interesting to note that the IT sector people prefer candidate with medium wealth. Candidates with low wealth and candidates with high wealth are not preferred by the IT sector employees.

Preference of test constituency people is exactly opposite; they prefer candidates with either very low or very high wealth. Candidates with medium wealth are not preferred.

The following observations were along similar lines.

It is interesting to note that the IT sector people prefer candidate with no cases while the people of test constituency prefer candidate with cases.

IT sector people prefer national party candidate while the people of test constituency prefer candidate regional party candidate.

It is interesting to note that education is the most important attribute for the IT sector people while wealth is the most important attribute for the test constituency people.

After a lot of data collection and analysis. We ended up with this conclusion:

The study found that data collected by election commission does not have statistically robust power for predicting or discriminating between winners and losers in an election. Discounting this, however, we find that urban elite as well as general voting public in some constituencies prefer national parties rather than regional parties or independents. Independents, in general have least preference. This observation is vindicated in the 2009 results as well. The study also finds, again not very robustly, that preference structures for various attributes such as number of cases, assets and education are markedly different between the urban elite and the general population – perhaps not surprising.

The main learning w.r.t., multivariate data analysis techniques is that the quality of data and the selection of variables determine the utility of the techniques to a very large extent. In this case, the objective of the study determined the choice of variables. This, in turn, lead to unfruitful results from various techniques.

If you are interested in statistical techniques and Indian elections, you may find the report interesting.

AMDA Project Lok Sabha Election Analysis Report.

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You can download the presentation here. If you would rather look at the full report than the presentation, you can do so by clicking the following link. BDMS LCD TV BCM exercise.

The exercise was carried out as part of a course called Behavioral Dimensions & Marketing Strategies.

Wikipedia defines brand as a collection of experiences and associations connected with a service, a person or any other entity. Thus, in order to understand what a brand represents to consumers, it is necessary to identify associations for a brand.

A brand concept map is a representation of network of associations in the minds consumers. If this sounds too abstract, bear with me, the examples that follow should make it amply clear.

Our objective was to prepare and study concept maps for two brands of LCD TVs. In order to choose brands to study, we did a small survey. We figured out people rated Sony highly and Samsung was a somewhat distant second. We wanted to figure out how consumers saw these TV brands differently and give recommendations to Samsung.

After working with our dozen or so of our volunteers (thanks guys!), we came up with concept maps for Sony and Samsung LCD TVs.

The brand concept map of Sony looks like this:

Brand concept map for Sony

How do you read this? Well, when a person thinks of Sony, the things that come to her mind are all the ideas that are connected to Sony directly. The strength of association between two concepts is shown by the number of lines that connect the two. The connection with three lines is the strongest and a connection with one line is the weakest.

For example, when a person thinks of Sony (LCD TV), what comes to her mind is with a strong association is the (High)  ”Product Quality” , and when the same person thinks of  ”Product Quality”, things like “Technical Superirority” and “Picture and Sound Quality” comes to her mind. The strongest association of Sony is with quality, followed by luxury, status (social factors) and trustworthiness of the brand. An interesting, albiet unsurprising, aspect is that sony is seen as “NOT value for money” by consumers

The brand concept map for Samsung looks like this:

Brand concept map for Samsung

Strongest associations for Samsung were that it was value for money and that its picture and sound quality. Other than this, there were large number of associations, but none were strong.

Dear reader, at this point what conclusions would you draw about Samsung? What could it do to improve itself?

You can read my next article on the subject that answers these questions and more at the following location http://www.rajeshgoli.com/academic/brand-concept-maps-2/